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Dried bushmeat is displayed near a road of the Yamoussoukro highway. Experts who have studied the Ebola virus from its discovery in 1976 in Democratic Republic of Congo, then Zaire, say its suspected origin is forest bats. Links have also been made to the carcasses of freshly slaughtered animals consumed as bushmeat.
(THIERRY GOUEGNON/Reuters/Corbis)

Ebola is a zoonotic disease, which means it can be passed between animals and people. As people cut down the forest or push further into the forest for mining and other work, it brings humans and animals into closer contact, say West and McDonnell. More overlap means more chances for viruses to jump from host to host and increased potential for an outbreak to spark.

For Ebola specifically, epidemiologists told West and McDonnell, the problem is bats, which come to live alongside people as their habitat is chopped down for firewood or agriculture. The Washington Post:

Driven out of their natural forested habitats, they’re swooping into populated regions, and some locals are now even hunting them. “Once extensive forests in which bats lived, separately from humans, have undergone progressive deforestation under the influence of population growth, land use, and climate change,” wrote Melissa Leach, the director of the Institute of Development Studies. “As bat habitats have fragmented and as people have moved into once-pristine forest areas, so human-bat contact has increased, making viral spillover more likely.”

Environmental degradation is actually a health problem for more than just Ebola—any disease that depends on people and wild animals being in close contact is affected by deforestation and habitat loss.

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About Colin Schultz

Colin Schultz is a freelance science writer and editor based in Toronto, Canada. He blogs for Smart News and contributes to the American Geophysical Union. He has a B.Sc. in physical science and philosophy, and a M.A. in journalism.

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